But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you: yea, who knows not such things as these?
All Commentaries on Job 12:3 Go To Job 12
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
45. For who is ignorant how greatly the practice and the knowledge of blessed Job excels the knowledge that his friends have? Now in order to correct their pride, he asserts that he is ‘not inferior’ to them, and lest he should transgress the limits of his own humility, he keeps to himself that he is superior to them; not by setting himself above, but by equalling himself to them, he points out what they should learn concerning themselves, who are far unlike to him; that whereas that wisdom which is high is voluntarily bowed down, the knowledge which lies grovelling may never erect itself against the nature of its powers, and he does well that he immediately recalls these to a sense of their equal condition, reflecting that they are swoln to excess as if for singurality in greatness, when he afterwards proceeds,
Yea, who knoweth not such things as these that ye know?
46. As though he said in plain words; Since what ye say is known to all men, wherefore are ye puffed up by the knowledge contained in your sayings, as of singular merit? Therefore whereas in bringing back the pride of the self-conceited to a common level of equality, he has reproved with a full correction, he now breaks out into statements of instruction; that his friends having been humbled first might learn the weightiness of Truth, and how reverently they should hear it.
